Philanthropy Buzzwords 2015

The 2015 Blueprint - which goes global this year with help from the great folks at betterplace lab - is now live. It has a buzzword list + special "design school edition" of buzzwords, predictions for the year ahead, and all the usual annual goodies. This is the 6th annual forecast - get your free copy at GrantCraft.

1. Internet of Things

It’s no longer just your laptop and your phone that hook you in to
the online world. Digital connections are now linking our watches,
shoes, refrigerators, thermostats, cars, and almost anything else that
can hold a teeny-tiny chip. Each of these devices becomes a sensor—a
collector and distributor—of data about our habits, our activities, and
us. More promise and more peril await nonprofits and the people they
serve as a result of this transformation. The Internet of Things is also known as ubiquitous computing or the "web with many things."

2. Citizen Science

As the cost of materials, equipment, and information drop, the
do-it-yourself and "maker" movements are turning to garage biology,
chemistry, and physics. Teenager Jack Andraka
made headlines as a self-taught cancer researcher who discovered a
pathbreaking way to detect pancreatic cancer early, and Public Lab has
launched numerous well-known science projects for social good. Lots of
people engaging in science is a good thing. On the other hand, given the
ubiquity of data-collecting devices (see Internet of Things), we’ll
surely have more occasions to ask, "How did they get that information?"
and "Who should be monitoring the scientists?"

3. Giving Days

Dedicating a specific day to fundraising for a certain cause has a
long history. Galvanizing lots of people around challenge grants has
been a mainstay fundraising tool deployed by American community
foundations for several years. But with the spectacular success of Giving Tuesday,
a re-branding of the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving to focus on
charitable giving, these events have reached a new pitch. In its third
year, the event has gone global and become a much-watched case example
of using social media for good.

4. A/B Testing

This is the practice of showing different interfaces or options to
specific groups of people and seeing which one is best at generating the
behavior you want to spark. Commonly used by direct-marketing firms,
software developers, and interface designers, A/B testing entered common
parlance with the Obama presidential campaign’s widespread use of it in
testing fundraising emails. The 2014 Facebook "contagion" study,
which used algorithmic manipulation to see whether happy or grim news
changed how people behaved, reminded us that the software behind our
screens is making choices about what we see.

5. Data Gender Gap

Gender disparities abound in data. Yes, even today medical research
is still done mostly on men (or male mice). Many other large sets of
data are used to inform policy or grant-making decisions, despite the
built-in biases created by omission. Similarly, large collections of
data also abound in—and can reinforce and exacerbate—racial, ethnic,
linguistic, geographic, and economic biases. Look for resources on data
discrimination and the built-in biases of data analytics and prediction
to get far more (much-needed) attention in 2015.

6. Encryption

Human-rights activists are on the front edge of creating and using
secure technologies to stay clear of corporate and government oversight.
Major foundations and large nonprofits have become targets for hackers,
whether they’re looking for sensitive grant information or stealing
donor information. A new British nonprofit, Simply Secure,
makes encrypted software for email and mobile phones easier to use and
more readily available. Nowadays, security is about more than not
clicking on the suspicious link in that phishing email. Nonprofits and
foundations will be taking more steps to keep their abundant digital
data secure.

7. Artivists

Take art, mix it with activism, and you get artivists. Whether it’s
posters and sculptures in public squares or the artistic protest
associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, artivists are stepping
out of the shadows and into the limelight. There’s a book of case
studies, Beautiful Trouble, to
help inspire and coach. Art played a role in the 2014 Hong Kong
protests and is part of an effort by cyclists in Germany to connect
crowdsourced data on biking routes to public art projects, all in the
name of changing public policy.

8. Wearables

Bracelet-style fitness monitors, upmarket pedometers masquerading as
jewelry, and digital-sensor-enabled clothing to monitor sweat patterns
or heart rhythms are just the latest ways people are wearing devices to
connect them to the Internet. Opportunities to donate
to charity based on your "steps walked" emerged almost instantly after
Fitbit tracker became popular. These devices also fed a widely
publicized data visualization of how the 2014 Napa Valley earthquake
disturbed sleep, which may be a harbinger of how big data will be used.
The data from these devices have already made it into courtroom battles.
The more common these devices become, the more people resemble walking,
talking cheap data points.

9. Smart Cities

More and more of the world’s population now lives in cities. Cheap
materials and improved data-collection processes mean our cities are
filled not only with more people but with more sensors, cameras,
parking-space sensors, tollgate passes, building codes, heat meters, you
name it. If it’s being built into today’s cityscape, it probably
gathers data ("senses") and sends that information somewhere.

The goal is to use all this remotely gathered information to improve municipal services, making our cities "smart." Smart will require that we set the right rules for what is gathered and what is done with it.

10. Iterate

The dictionary tells us that iterate means to do again and again. In
its buzzword guise, it is one of many design terms that has jumped the
rhetorical fence, pulled along by related terms like "innovate," into
philanthropy. Sexier than your grandmother’s pilot program, iterations
mean trying something small, learning from it, and improving as you go
along.

About me

Why is this blog called Philanthropy 2173?

This is a blog about the future. The year 2173 seems sufficiently far enough in the future to give us some perspective. As sure as we are of ourselves now, talking about the future - and making philanthropic investments - requires that we keep a sense of modesty and humor about what we are doing. Philanthropy is for the long-term - for the year 2173.